Context

Viet Nam and climate change

Viet Nam has made a determined commitment to develop a sustainable economy in line with the goals set at the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris in 2015.

For example, Viet Nam submitted its National Contribution (NCDP/iNDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in September 2015, setting the unconditional target of reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) by 8% compared to the baseline scenario, which could be increased to 25% with foreign aid. Vietnam signed the Paris Accord in April 2016 in New York and ratified it in November 2016. The Vietnamese government has finally approved the implementation plan of the Paris Climate Agreement in Vietnam. (QD2053/QĐ-TTg of 28 October 2016)

Viet Nam's commitment on climate issues is not recent. The Vietnamese government promulgated the National Climate Change Strategy in 2011 and the National Green Growth Strategy and Action Plans in 2012. These two national strategies are steered and coordinated by the National Climate Change Committee (NCCC), which is chaired by the Prime Minister, and whose Secretariat, the department responsible for assisting the NCCC, is provided by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE).

Viet Nam is indeed a country particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change: rising sea levels, soil erosion, rising temperatures, extreme weather events (drought, floods). The country comprises two immense deltas, veritable rice granaries of the subcontinent, more than 3200 kilometres of coastline, some of which are already subject to accelerated erosion, and an increase in temperature compared to pre-industrial times already exceeding 2°C in some places. The Mekong Delta, one of the 3 most vulnerable deltas in the world along with the Nile (Egypt) and Ganges-Brahmaputra (Bangladesh), in particular, is already the subject of a strategic plan by the Vietnamese government. The studies on climate impacts in Viet Nam thus reinforce and refine this political will.

Controlling climate change is the subject of Resolution 24/NQ-TW of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Viet Nam in 2013 on responding to climate change, strengthening natural resource management and environmental protection. This action is also incorporated in the Government Resolution 63/NQ-CP of 2016 on the publication of the Government Action Plan in implementation of the National Assembly Resolution on the Five-Year Socio-Economic Development Plan of the country for the period 2016-2020. The Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam marked in 2017, through Resolution 120/NQ-CP on the sustainable development of the Mekong Delta in response to climate change, his willingness to respond to the urgency of climate damage particularly affecting the key economic region of the Mekong Delta by preparing an integrated adaptation strategy in the region.

AFD and its strategies in Vietnam

AFD, a French State public establishment and financing company, is a stakeholder in France's official development assistance mechanism. It has gradually oriented its aid and cooperation mechanism towards financing climate change mitigation and/or adaptation policies and projects and has become one of the leading international donors with the objective of becoming a "100% Paris Agreement".

For AFD, supporting the national climate change and green growth policy is a strategic priority for its operations in Vietnam. In this framework, AFD has been supporting Vietnam for many years in the design, development and implementation of a development strategy that is low in GHG emissions, conserves natural resources and is resilient to the adverse effects of climate change. In this respect, AFD wishes to continue supporting Vietnam in preventing and adapting to the consequences of natural disasters. Over the 2006-2017 period, EUR 717M of financing has been allocated to Vietnam to finance 22 development projects and programs to combat climate change or adapt to its effects.

The agency is also one of the first development partners contributing to the public policy dialogue with the Vietnamese authorities within the Support Program in Response to Climate Change (SPRCC). AFD also contributes to the organization of seminars and the production of publications on climate and sustainable development issues. The French team has reiterated its interest and availability this year 2018 to support Vietnam in raising the country's ambitions in line with its international commitments. This ambition is formalized in the memorandum of understanding signed between AFD and MONRE in March 2018 on the occasion of the official visit to the Elysée Palace of the Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

Need for the VN Gemmes programme

The role of research in decision support

Faced with the new complexity of today's world, the rise of new technologies and the discovery of new types of immediate or long-term dangers (climate change, epidemics of new diseases, technological risks; terrorism), scientific expertise has become an essential tool for a modern State to help it in its decision-making. The management of this expertise as well as its systematic integration into the decision-making process takes on a completely new importance nowadays. Scientific research requires autonomy in its objects, its methods and the analysis of its results. There is an ongoing dialogue with the different levels of public decision-making, which can shed crucial light on the difficulties encountered in translating research results into concrete and coherent action. The link between research and public decision-making is therefore the product of reciprocal innervation, with respect for each other's autonomy and roles. The process of drawing up the reports of the International Group of Experts on Climate can serve as a reference in this respect.

Status of research on CC and adaptation strategies in Vietnam

Research on climate change and its impacts in Viet Nam is a particularly active area. Actors range from academic research in economics, anthropology, sociology, climatology, hydrology, ... to non-governmental organisations supporting field initiatives in terms of resilience and adaptation, to government studies from various research institutes placed with Vietnamese ministries or the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, or by donors in the framework of applied research aimed at providing adaptation and resilience services downstream of the studies.

Nevertheless, there are almost no comprehensive studies on the diversity of socio-economic impacts of climate change in Viet Nam and on possible adaptation pathways. The last relatively similar approach dates back to a study by UNU-Wider and ICES (Arndt et al., 2015), to which the VN Gemmes project proposes to add considerably in terms of economic, social, geographical and discussion of adaptation strategies. The econometric work developed for an estimation of climate damage in the United States (Hsiang et al., 2017) and the inter-disciplinary work proposed by and for the Aquitaine region (Salles and Le Treut, 2017) are the sources of inspiration for the project, beyond the macroeconomic approach specific to the Gemmes programme (Bovari et al., 2018).

History of the Gemmes programme

The GEMMES (GEneralized Monetary Macrodynamics for the Ecological Shift) applied research program, launched by AFD in 2015, aims to facilitate public policy dialogue on climate-related issues and more broadly on ecological transition.It has two main objectives: to participate in and contribute to the international debate on climate (IPCC, COP, ...), and to strengthen capacities to build, manage and assess public climate policies in partner countries. Partnerships have thus been initiated with Brazil (on energy transition scenarios), with Côte d'Ivoire (on the budgetary impact of variations in the price of raw materials) and with Colombia (on the role of natural resources). Each partnership is based on the alliance of an anchor within the country's government bodies at the heart of climate strategy decisions, and within one or more research organisations (or think-tanks). All of them are also part of a capacity building perspective (notably applied research and expertise) and public policy dialogue.

Objectives of the VN Gemmes project

The VN Gemmes project will use the latest scientific methods in all relevant fields for the analysis of impacts and adaptation strategies, in close cooperation with Vietnamese scientists, Vietnamese public research institutes, selected in coordination with the NCCC via MONRE as its secretariat. The main selection criteria are scientific excellence in the selected fields, the prospects for articulation with the programming of public climate policies and access to the best existing data for each of the project's tasks. The research work will start in the first quarter of 2019, once a dedicated AFD financial vehicle is launched to support analysis, research and decision support efforts on mitigation and adaptation policies in partner countries.

The VN Gemmes programme is highly complementary to existing projects of other bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organisations. Indeed, many of these are positioned in analyses of Viet Nam's mitigation strategies, such as the Platform 2050 project launched at the initiative of Laurence Tubiana for a set of key countries including Viet Nam. This platform is in the process of concluding a partnership with the MPI on the prospects for long-term low-carbon transition, which will be coordinated with AFD's Gemmes VN project on impacts and adaptation. Bilateral and multilateral donors are for the most part financing direct contributions to the elaboration of public climate policies where the Gemmes VN project is positioned upstream, at a level of addition to existing knowledge.

The results of the Gemmes VN project will feed into the preparation of the different components of Vietnamese climate action by providing upstream technical and scientific notes, the priorities of which will be discussed with the Climate Change Department of MONRE, as permanent secretariat of the NCCC. The VN Gemmes project has a new objective to provide an integrated, open and as comprehensive as possible analytical framework for damage and adaptation issues in Viet Nam.

Project components

The project is organised around different workpackages (WP). The first six WPs are dedicated to scientific research, research capacity building and the translation of scientific results into policy briefs for each of the themes addressed, for the NCCC. The WP7 is more specifically dedicated to the dissemination and organisation of conferences, seminars and events on impacts and adaptation issues, particularly in the framework of international climate conferences.

Beneficiaries of the VN Gemmes project

Direct beneficiaries of the project

The Gemmes VN project targets two distinct types of direct beneficiaries:

• The National Climate Change Committee (NCCC, including MONRE, MARD, and MPI)
• The Vietnamese climate change scientific research community in Viet Nam.

The first beneficiary will have co-ownership of the scientific results, will ensure the transformation of these results into operational public policy recommendations or briefing notes for administrative and political decision-makers, and will be able to promote these results at conferences for the general public or at events during the next Conferences of the Parties. The second beneficiary has the benefit of funds to conduct scientific research at international level, supported by French research units from CNRS, INRA and IRD. These funds allow the direct financing of researchers, post-doctoral, doctoral and master students, international training, seminars and conferences, field missions as well as the acquisition of research equipment.

Indirect beneficiaries of the project

Two types of indirect beneficiaries are considered:

• Non-governmental organisations and other relevant services will be able to use the scientific results and the dissemination to a wide public of the effects of climate change to guide and increase their actions on the ground.
• The general public, particularly in Viet Nam, will have access to comprehensive and qualitative information on possible adaptation strategies to the effects of climate change.

Organisation of project implementation

General structuring of the project

The GEMMES Vietnam project is structured around 3 circles:

• an academic circle at the heart of the programme, which will autonomously develop its research (Axes 1 to 6), while using privileged access to public data thanks to the institutional circle and feeding into diagnoses and policy recommendations on the subjects of damage and adaptation.
A research committee is composed of the three research co-directors and the leaders of the different WPs to discuss and guide the project on a quarterly basis. Any researcher included in the project or any expert involved in policy ownership can participate upon request of one of the three co-directors. A representative of the institutional committee can participate as an observer. A scientific evaluation committee, external to the project and composed of internationally recognised researchers in the different fields of the project, will propose an analysis of the project's progress, the methods used and the results obtained at the mid-term and at the end of the project.
• an institutional circle then, which will aim to cooperate with the various ministries in charge of climate issues and in particular impact and adaptation issues (present within the NCCC interministerial committee led by the Vietnamese MP, and therefore the permanent secretariat is placed under the Ministry of the Environment - MONRE) and to feed into the diagnosis and recommendations for these ministries (Axis 7). MONRE's Climate Change Department (DCC), ensuring the secretariat tasks of the NCCC, will be the institutional coordinator of this circle. It will work in close collaboration with the central and local authorities involved in the project, facilitate access to data and encourage the public policy dialogue that the project may inspire.
A coordination committee will be set up to mobilise experts from the ministries and local authorities involved in the project activities, to facilitate access to data, and to anticipate the needs for effective public policy dialogue (selection of experts for the drafting of policy briefs). This committee will meet at regular intervals of approximately 6 months in wide format, and 3 months in restricted format. The exact composition of the coordination committee belongs to the MoNRE/DCC. It may alternate between :

- A minimum format, which will include the GEMMES VN project leader, research co-leaders, relevant research experts, an expert from the NCCC, a representative of the DCC and relevant ministerial expert(s) on the topic on the agenda.

- A broad format, which will also include regional and thematic representatives from AFD, and higher level representation from the NCCC, DCC and ministerial experts.

• Finally, a public circle, which will promote the dissemination of information on the impacts of climate change and possible resilience strategies, while also feeding the diagnosis of researchers and politicians through closer contact with the different currents in society.
This public circle, structured as a committee of personalities recognised for their contribution to the dissemination and awareness of environmental and climate issues in Viet Nam and around the world, will be mobilised during dissemination events and on a case-by-case basis after discussion by the research and coordination committees. The composition of the committee is decided jointly by the coordination and research committees.

Articulation between the research and the NCCC by the coordination committee

The Gemmes Vietnam project is a response to a strong political opportunity: the recent declaration of the Vietnamese Prime Minister on the damage suffered by the Mekong Delta, which has prompted the implementation of a strategic plan in which the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MoNRE), the Ministry of Agriculture (MARD) and the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) will be strongly involved; the willingness of MONRE, as the permanent office of the National Climate Change Committee (NCCC), to include a damage and adaptation component in the next update report on the implementation of Vietnam's National Contributions submitted in 2021 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the need for the MPI to better take into account the costs of climate damage on the different types of public investments in the framework of its development of five-year plans, long-term plans and the national adaptation strategy.

In view of the above, the MoNRE, precisely because of its role as the permanent office of the NCCC (via the Department of Climate Change, DCC), has been chosen as the institutional entry point of the project, and privileged partner of the project. This mutual interest must be formalised in a letter of intent.

The good articulation between the NCCC and the GEMMES VN project is crucial to the success of the project. On the one hand, it will allow to prioritize the research and especially the "policy" notes in accordance with the NCCC agenda; on the other hand, it will facilitate the access to certain data and the coordination of the actors on the project. During the project, and in addition to the joint events that will be organised on a regular basis (conferences, seminars, side-events at COPs), the regular meeting of a coordination committee will discuss the incorporation of the scientific results in the form of public policy briefs in support of the national adaptation plan, the Mekong Delta strategy and the bi-annual report on national contributions by 2021.

The Platform 2050, launched by Laurence Tubiana to operationalise the objectives of the Paris Agreement, proposes to launch an exercise with Viet Nam (and more specifically the MPI) on the country's long-term low-carbon trajectories. This theme of mitigation and low-carbon trajectories to 2050 is very complementary to the objectives of the GEMMES VN project on impacts and adaptation to 2050. This complementarity could give rise to real coordination, from the organisation of joint or shared events/workshops, to reflection on the harmonisation of the scientific methods used and joint participation in this coordination committee.

Implementation of the project

Financing channels

AFD is the project owner: it selects, finances and validates all the services of the different WPs, via research centres as well as individual researchers or experts for the political appropriation of the results. It prepares, coordinates and finances the organization of seminars/conferences, particularly within the framework of the Climate Conferences (COPs) or any other element of dissemination or communication strategy.

With a view to simplifying administration, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), which has been present and active for many years in Viet Nam in all fields of applied research, was chosen as a partner to be the project's integrator and to contract with the various Vietnamese research operators and event organisers. AFD will contract within this framework (possibly via a COPAR) with IRD in a direct agreement format.

Partner institutional authority

The Vietnamese institutional authority partner of the project is MONRE, via the DCC, as the permanent secretariat of the NCCC. It coordinates the institutional circle through the coordination committee. As such, it is in charge of :

- Cooperation with relevant ministries and departments such as MPI, MFA, MARD, State Bank of Vietnam, GSO, etc.

- the validation at biannual intervals of the experts selected for the integration of the results into Viet Nam's climate strategies and the prioritisation of the research work in relation to the Vietnamese climate agenda.

- appropriation and dissemination of the project results in the relevant regulatory texts, and submission of the final project results reports to the NCCC and the relevant ministries.

Entities involved in the implementation of the project

The entities directly in charge of project implementation are therefore the research and institutional committees. They cooperate and exchange regularly for the smooth running of the project and the articulation between research and institutional dissemination.

Eligible national and international researchers and experts participate in the implementation of the project activities, in compliance with the Vietnamese regulations in force. Recruited service providers must carry out the signed contracts in compliance with the quality and deadline requirements of these contracts.

AFD will cooperate closely with the ministries and departments concerned and with the DCC during the implementation of the project. It will also ensure cooperation with the various nongovernmental organizations working on related subjects in order to harmonize methods and give additional leverage to the work undertaken in the framework of Gemme VN.